Triage is an important part of any Emergency Medical Response. This is the clinical process of rapidly screening large numbers of patients to assess severity and assign appropriate priority of treatment. Triage is a reality as medical resources are never enough for all patients to be attended instantaneously. It is thus important to be able to quickly identify patients of higher severity, who would need such resources more urgently. Therefore, a device for automatic patient outcome (cardiac arrest and mortality) analysis could be helpful to conduct triage, especially in disaster or mass casualty situations, where demand overwhelms resources.
Current triage systems are based on clinical judgment, traditional vital signs and other physiological parameters. They tend to be subjective, and are not so convenient and efficient for clinicians. Moreover, the clinical ‘vital signs’ including heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, temperature and pulse oximetry have not been shown to correlate well with short or long-term clinical outcomes.